


things i love about you

by corinnana



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Slow Romance, love is carving your initials into trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27178790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinnana/pseuds/corinnana
Summary: Oikawa sometimes wondered what Iwaizumi knew about him beyond his athletic talents or his looks or his outward reputation. When he asked one morning, Iwaizumi barked out a laugh.“I think I know you better than you know yourself,” he said.-Over the years, Oikawa learns little by little everything he loves about Iwaizumi (and everything Iwaizumi loves about him.)
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 23
Kudos: 121





	things i love about you

**Author's Note:**

> short and sweet! hope you enjoy <3

When he and Iwaizumi started dating, Oikawa didn’t know what to expect.

He had been told horror stories of couples who were driven to break-ups only days after declaring themselves as boyfriends, and he saw their label as the first step towards a long-lasting relationship. Being friends and teammates and peers was nothing compared to being lovers, he’d realized. 

Oikawa knew the side of Iwaizumi that was level-headed and strong, a constant who had been dubbed Seijoh’s ace for his reliability. He knew Iwaizumi as a little kid whose eyes lit up when he’d opened his Christmas present one year to find a Godzilla action figure, Iwaizumi as a boy who refused to cry when he skinned his knees from falling on the sidewalk one too many times, Iwaizumi as a teenager who secretly practiced his cross spike to the point that he wore a hole in his shoes.

It wasn’t only those things; their relationship had progressed since then. 

Oikawa had recently gotten to know a new side of Iwaizumi: a crush who stuttered when he told Oikawa that he liked him and smiled so hard his face was sore the next day. A boyfriend whose ears turned bright red the first time they tried to kiss and accidentally bumped their teeth together. A lover who carefully peeled and sliced apples for Oikawa during a picnic date he’d planned, then used the same pocket knife to carve a crooked heart and the initials IH + OT into the bark of a nearby birch tree. 

It was difficult at first to reconcile all those sides of Iwaizumi. The person that scolded him daily at volleyball practice also murmured sweet nothings at midnight, and his teasing nicknames for Oikawa had become more like affectionate pet names.

Once, Oikawa had accidentally left a tab about an amusement park event in their area open on his laptop in class, perusing possible date options that he never expected to follow through on. Iwaizumi had handed him two tickets to the amusement park the very next day.

“A coworker said they couldn’t go, so they gave me their tickets for next week,” Iwaizumi had said, the tips of his ears reddening in a way that meant he was telling a lie. “I figured you might want to go. You’re childish enough to like this kind of thing, right?”

(Oikawa didn’t say it then, but he knew that Iwaizumi was, too.)

New sides of each other weren’t too common; they’d known one another too long to be surprised by each other’s words and tendencies. They had never lived together, but Oikawa already knew that Iwaizumi would pile up laundry until he ran out of clothes, that his least favorite chore was vacuuming because he didn’t like the noise, and that he set alarms in five-minute increments when he had to wake up early.

He knew little things that Iwaizumi didn’t even know about himself, information that was dear to him despite its apparent uselessness. He knew how many moles Iwaizumi had on his body (answer: eight), the way his expression softened when he slept, and the smile he had when he saw a dog walking in the street. He noticed all the private and romantic and endearing details of Iwaizumi that he hoped no one else would ever get to know.

Oikawa sometimes wondered what Iwaizumi knew about him beyond his athletic talents or his looks or his outward reputation. When he asked one morning, Iwaizumi barked out a laugh.

“I think I know you better than you know yourself,” he said. 

* * *

Three months passed. Oikawa learned more about Iwaizumi during that time, from the way he intertwined their fingers and squeezed his hand when they walked down the sidewalk or the way he proudly introduced their relationship to others (and it was quickly becoming the way Oikawa did all of those things, too). He could recite Iwaizumi’s coffee order at three different cafes -- not just the order itself, which he’d known even before they began dating, but also the exact intonation and tone of his voice as he spoke. It seemed like Iwaizumi was an endless library whose volumes Oikawa was intent on reading.

It wasn’t a difficult task to know all of these things. Oikawa’s mind always seemed to be on Iwaizumi; his thoughts of volleyball and schoolwork and family were subsumed by the boy he’d quickly become enamored with. Everything reminded him of Iwaizumi, for better or for worse, and Oikawa couldn’t help but observe him for the same reason. 

“Is there something on my face?” Iwaizumi once asked in the locker room, half in exasperation and half in amusement. “You’re looking at me in a funny way.”

Oikawa straightened up, blinking as he raised his head. “Am I?”

“You do that sometimes. It’s like you’re zoning out, but you’re looking at me.”

“Can’t I look at the love of my life?” Oikawa meant to sound teasing, but his voice was soft and quiet. He relished the blush on Iwaizumi’s face.

“Damn,” Hanamaki piped up from beside them. “You could at least wait until Mattsun and I leave before you get lovey-dovey.”

Matsukawa clapped Oikawa on the back, nodding. “But if it makes you feel any better, Iwaizumi does puppy eyes at you when you’re not looking.”

“No, I don’t,” Iwaizumi protested, but the tips of his ears were rosy again, and though they’d just finished an exhausting workout, Oikawa suddenly felt like he could do a thousand jump serves without getting tired. 

He reached up to feel his own flushed face. When he looked back up at Iwaizumi again, he thought he saw a glimpse of the puppy eyes Matsukawa had been talking about, a look of adoration he’d seen only a handful of times.

“Ugh, Oikawa’s doing it now, too. Get a room.”

Hanamaki feigned retching sounds next to them while Matsukawa sighed, and Oikawa added the gleam of love in Iwaizumi’s eyes to his list of favorite things he’d never share with anyone.

* * *

The days continued to slip by, and Oikawa collected more tidbits of information about the sides of Iwaizumi he hadn’t seen before. Iwaizumi hummed love songs under his breath when he held Oikawa in his arms with their legs tangled; Iwaizumi called him “Tooru” when they were alone together; Iwaizumi never hung up first on their phone calls at night. For the umpteenth time, Oikawa fervently hoped that no one else would ever get the chance to know these things.

When the six month mark of their relationship approached, Oikawa reveled in the feeling that he and Iwaizumi had made it from March to September. He’d heard that most couples often broke up in the first few months of their relationship, and he was glad that they hadn’t.

“Aren’t you glad we’re still dating, too?” he asked Iwaizumi. He was sprawled on top of him, arms wrapped around Iwaizumi’s waist. “Apparently, the first couple of months are the hardest.”

Iwaizumi had scoffed, but the finger rubbing circles into the small of Oikawa’s back remained soothing. “Of course we’re still dating. Who says we’re like most couples, anyway?”

“Aw, come on. You can be sappy today, Iwa-chan. I won’t judge you.”

“Why? Because it’s our six month anniversary?”

“Well, it’s _technically_ only an anniversary if it’s been a year. Six months doesn’t really count. So it's a half-anniversary.” He thought to himself. "A semi-anniversary."

Iwaizumi’s chest rumbled with laughter beneath Oikawa’s head. “You’re so particular about the most random things.”

“I'm not.”

“You are, too.”

“Am not.”

“Come on, you’re the type of person to say ‘may’ instead of ‘can’ when you ask teachers to use the bathroom. And you always stir your coffee and tea the same way.”

“Do I really?”

“Three times counterclockwise,” Iwaizumi said. “Every single time. You do it with straws in your water at restaurants, too. It's like a reflex."

Oikawa ignored the swelling feeling of his heart in his chest. “Still, six months is a long time,” he said. “Already halfway to one anniversary.”

“I don’t think six months is that long for a relationship.”

Oikawa frowned, raising his head to look at him.

“I plan to have many, many anniversaries with you,” Iwaizumi continued. “Six months isn’t much compared to that, is it?”

“Oh. How many anniversaries?” 

Iwaizumi hummed again, a soft melody that Oikawa thought would make a good serenade, his fingers ghosting over the nape of Oikawa’s neck and tangling through his hair. “However many more years we’re alive.”

* * *

Occasionally, Oikawa returned to the tree that Iwaizumi had inscribed with their initials. He would trace the rough edges of the heart and the jagged IH + OT with his index finger, savoring the memory of their date under the tree's spring blossoms and admiring the burnt orange leaves as autumn came around. A few months after it had been carved, he started to notice other declarations of love appearing on the tree, things like KT + HS and SD + SK along with crooked hearts and “love u 4evers.”

It was no longer the best handiwork or even the largest heart, but he still thought that Iwaizumi’s carving was the best. Something about the asymmetrical and uneven strokes made it even better than the showy size or neat shape of the others. The novelty of the gesture still made him smile.

“I think you started some sort of couple's tradition on that tree, Iwa-chan,” he told him the day after. They were walking together down the street, hand in hand and ignoring the glances of passersby. “Some others are carving their initials into it, too. KT and HS and whoever.”

“The birch tree in the local park?”

“Right, from a while ago."

Iwaizumi looked at him. "You still go back to see it, too?"

"When I'm doing my morning run sometimes, I'll stop by." Oikawa saw Iwaizumi's smile grow. "We can see it if you want -- it's on the way home. There are other hearts and messages on it now."

“The romantic in you must love that,” Iwaizumi said. “But I bet you’re probably feeling some weird sense of competition with those unknown couples, aren’t you? Like you have to win at dating or something dumb like that.”

“I guess so,” Oikawa said, knowing that it was absolutely true. He wondered when Iwaizumi had started to understand him better than he understood himself. "No worries, though. We're winning at dating."

"I think KT and HS from the tree would probably disagree."

"Pretty sure I like you more than someone else could ever like anyone, Iwa-chan," he said, watching Iwaizumi's face carefully. He liked to fluster him when they were in public, to see his dimples deepen and his face turn red as his gruff exterior slipped. Oikawa had made it a game where he was the only player, as he was the only one who could make Iwaizumi's expression like that. "Which means we win."

"That's not true," Iwaizumi muttered, eyes darting around the street.

"It's not?"

"I like you even more," he said, heat rising on his cheeks.

Oikawa tried to hide his smile. "Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you."

"I said I like you."

"Oh, it's so loud here. One more time?"

Iwaizumi tugged his hand out of Oikawa's grasp. "Shut up. I take it back."

"Aw, that's no way to treat the love of your life."

"Alright, I'm cutting down that damn tree."

"You would never," Oikawa said, laughing. "You couldn't hurt a fly."

"I will _end_ you."

"You're so nice to me when you're tired and in bed, Iwa-chan, but you're so mean during the day."

"Well, I'm about to be mean all the time."

"I love you," Oikawa declared out of the blue -- loudly, just to see Iwaizumi's reaction.

"You're so embarrassing." Then, just as Oikawa knew he would, he said, "I love you, too."

* * *

A year passed. Oikawa was a walking Iwaizumi-Hajime encyclopedia, and he liked to think that he knew more about Iwaizumi than anyone would ever know (the comforting weight of his arm around him as they slept, the disheveled state he'd be in after an intense makeout session, the sound of his footsteps when he got up early and tried not to wake Oikawa. 

Still, Oikawa sometimes felt overly conscious of his own faults, the sides of himself that he thought were less than perfect. It was hypocritical to want to know all the parts of Iwaizumi while simultaneously trying to come off as perfect, and he said so to Iwaizumi a few days after their first anniversary.

“You don’t have to act around me, Tooru,” Iwaizumi told him. “You know I’d love you no matter what you did.”

“What would you do if I became really clingy?”

“That’s fine. I’d be just as clingy.”

Oikawa tapped his chin. “What if I sucked at volleyball?”

“I don’t date you because you’re good at volleyball, idiot.”

“Well, what if I were ugly?”

“You are,” Iwaizumi said, his dimples prominent as he smiled.

“Hey,” he said. “Take that back before this ugly idiot breaks up with you.”

“Fine, fine. Either way, you know I didn’t start liking you because you’re good looking.”

“Then why?”

Iwaizumi was quiet for a few moments. “Because you’re you, I guess. Nothing else to it. That’s probably why you’re the only one for me, Tooru.”

“Even the sides of me that everyone else doesn’t like?” Oikawa asked. He didn’t know if he was joking or not, but he could tell Iwaizumi was serious.

So Iwaizumi told him that he remembered the time Oikawa broke down in front of Kageyama back in the middle school gym, the time Oikawa seriously injured his knee for the first time and argued with the coach for hours about how much he’d be allowed to practice in the upcoming weeks, and the time he’d soaked both their volleyball jerseys with tears in the passenger seat of his car after they lost the final match of the Nationals qualifying tournament. 

Iwaizumi said he was familiar the side of Oikawa that was Mr. Perfect to teachers and coaches and even local news reporters, the one who had been the star setter, driven captain, and exemplary student all in one. He knew the side of Oikawa that was the childhood friend who used to play pranks on unsuspecting neighbors in the heat of youth, the boy who taught himself how to do a successful jump serve in his first year of middle school, the teenager who trusted his teammates under all circumstances and who earned their unequivocal trust, too.

Iwaizumi knew the Oikawa who accepted his fumbling confession with laughter and hugged him with so much force they were left breathless, the Oikawa who pressed open-mouthed kisses on the dimple next to his mouth (then laughed at his own bad aim and tried again for the lips), the Oikawa who revisited the IH + OT carving and sat under the tree whenever he felt like reminiscing about the two of them. 

He said he knew the Oikawa he loved and the one who loved him back just as fiercely. And they would have the rest of their lives to learn everything else.

* * *

A few anniversaries later, Oikawa and Iwaizumi (soon to be Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi, after they'd bickered for awhile about who should take whose last names) returned to the old tree.

Even years after they had begun dating, knowing each other was another form of loving each other. They'd picked up new habits in the years spent together, shared tendencies and tastes, yet they'd preserved old behaviors: one still hummed love songs before they went to bed, the other still tried to fluster him with sudden declarations of love. Love was in the little things, they realized, things like sharing conversations and meals and laughter and kisses and embraces.

Standing by the tree, Oikawa smiled as he looked at the green of the leaves swaying against a cerulean sky. He had discovered a few months prior that birch tree bark peeled but didn't grow back over the course of its lifetime, making it perfect for inscriptions for couples -- the symbol of their love would remain there as long as the tree lived.

"Are you thinking something about outliving the tree?" Iwaizumi asked him. "You've been staring at it for a while now, Tooru."

"How'd you guess?" Oikawa laughed. "I just don't want to see it die."

"We can plant another one in our yard as soon as we finish moving in. I'll carve that heart again if you want. I can do a better job now than I did when I was 17." 

"It'll be IH + IT now, right?"

"If you want it to be."

Oikawa smiled, intertwining their fingers and leaning forward to press his forehead to Iwaizumi's. "You know I do," he said.

**Author's Note:**

> life has been busy busy busy recently, but i've decided to take a break from all the work and braindump some of my sappy iwaoi thoughts here (i have too many). it's rambly and romantic and roughhewn and ruminative and all those other good "R" adjectives.
> 
> thank you to everyone who's reading this, and lots of love for anyone who is kind enough to leave kudos or a comment! <333


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